


Personhood

by periferal



Category: RWBY
Genre: Adam Taurus is a Piece of Shit, Angst, Blake Is Not In A Good Place, Character Study, Denial, Depression, F/F, Hurt No Comfort, Personhood, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, internalized prejudice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-25 23:36:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7551529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/periferal/pseuds/periferal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after Blake has fled the group and is wandering Vale, presumably for a very long time. Introspective and depressing, Adam's ghost will not leave her alone.<br/>One-shot full of self denial.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Personhood

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I rewatch the black trailer.  
> Wrote in an evening, not yet edited. Will go through and change things later, probably.  
> (7.21.16)

It wasn’t just what he did to Yang, or the words he spoke. It wasn’t just that, it was never just that, even as she ran from the evacuation site, guilt heavy in her chest and gnawing its way to her stomach and spreading as fast as the nausea. It wasn’t that he was different, that he’d done everything possible to fulfill the doubts she’d had on the train that day. 

It was that he’d laughed. That was what made her stomach twist in on itself, made her like punching something, whether it be him or just herself. Of course, she’d run instead, carrying Yang, fleeing, as he mocked her, as he laughed. As he pleaded with words that would have made her want go back to him, once upon a time, but now just made her skin crawl all the way to her eye sockets. So of course she’d run, like she’d done that day, and she left him again, though this time she stuck around in her head with that laugh and the visceral reminder of what he’d become in the form of what happened to Yang. What he’d done to Yang. 

She ran away as soon as she was able to catch her breath, as soon as Sun’s back was turned and she was certain that Yang would be safe and evacuated. She told herself it was to keep Yang safe, to make sure she was never a target again. That’s what she’d almost muttered out loud instead of  _ I’m sorry _ . Which is what she did say, under her breath, hoping that Yang didn’t hear her. Hoping, for a tiny, sick second, that she would be in too much pain to know exactly when she had left. 

What she didn’t let herself think as she made her way hastily over the rooftops of this now destroyed part of Vale was that this wasn’t for Yang. Of course it wasn’t for Yang, it was for her so she wouldn’t have to look at Yang, so she wouldn’t have to acknowledge that it was her fault that Adam had changed so much. If she didn’t see Yang, Yang couldn’t get hurt again and Blake didn’t have to think quite so much about how much Adam had changed. It hadn’t been that long either, a year maybe, less probably, something like that. Not so much time compared to the time she had spent with him with the White Fang, growing up and training and even being in love, just a little. 

Love. He’d called her love,  _ love _ , in a tone of voice that made her think more of someone talking to a dog than to a person. Which was rich, coming from him, considering what they’d fought for. That was what they were supposed to be fighting for, right, personhood? The right to be considered equal to the humans, not better, not worse, just different? That’s what they were fighting for, right, not... grimm attacks on civilians and deals with human crime lords. 

She spent most of her time in the city moving, jumping between roofs and running and sometimes fighting the remaining grimm and sometimes fighting nothing. She just had to keep moving, when she wasn’t finding something or other to eat, or when she tried to sleep for a few fitful hours caught whenever she was sure she was safe, hoping for once the dreams wouldn’t catch her. 

Personhood. Is this what people did, run away, hide from friends and the monster under her bed Adam had become? She stole, sometimes, from the houses people no longer lived in. Somehow the city stayed closed off, maybe because of all the grimm that were still there, even after ages, even after so much fighting that she watched from far away sometimes, wondering if Glinda or one of the other teachers knew she was there. 

Once, she thought Oobleck looked at her. He was walking, patrolling maybe, by a house she was sitting on top of, and maybe he heard her footsteps. He looked up, and she...  _ froze _ . She certainly didn’t feel like a person then, didn’t know if she looked like a person. 

He’d gone back to walking, and she heard Port calling for him, tiredness in his voice instead of that jovialness she remembered from class. 

Adam’s laugh still stuck in her head, and  _ love _ and the look of shock on Yang’s face when her arm was just gone, one moment from the next, Blake’s ability to leave a ghost of herself behind completely useless here. What good is not getting hurt if you can’t even save your invinceable friend. How still she became.

Blake dreamt sometimes of red eyes and a hurt she can feel in her gut, of accusing words and blows given with a metal arm, like the one she’d seen on Ironwood. She dreamt of laughter, and of a pair of gloved hands reaching for her, of kisses she wanted then but did not want now, not after everything.

The first night after she fled, she dreamt of forgiveness, of waking up next to Yang, or smiles and of kisses again, but this time she wanted them. She dreamed of interlocked fingers, and promises of a future. 

Sometimes as she was running she wondered if Yang missed her. She imagined Yang, learning how to use a metal arm, smiling with Ruby and needling Weiss. She imagined her happy, which made her happy, but also made her want to tie herself, not just her heart, into knots and hide herself away somewhere else, somewhere gone. 

His laugh followed her as she was running, and sometimes, when she wasn’t thinking of Yang, she was asking herself if she had ever been a person to him. Had he ever loved her, or was she just another monster to use for his revenge, for his rage, for his sense that he was owed the world if only he could break it apart in the way he wanted to. 

She could not go back. She couldn’t go back to him, and she couldn’t go back to Yang. She didn’t deserve to, didn’t deserve that trust and that faith, that love she’d thrown away. Maybe not even love, she thought sometimes, head full of tiredness and hunger pain. But she’d thrown away something, and it was her fault that he had hurt her. It was her fault, and she had to stay away. 

**Author's Note:**

> I enjoy making my favorite characters sad.  
> Next thing I write will hopefully be fluffy.
> 
> You know in that universe that actually happened where everything is happy and nothing hurts.


End file.
